Indian child prodigies we should be proud of!

Child prodigies we should be proud of!

As we celebrate the spirit of childhood, here are some children who've made India proud:

Everyone loves child geniuses!

The previous generations have had their fair share -- like tabla maestro Zakir Hussain and Maths prodigies Shakuntala Devi and S Ramanujan among many others.

This generation is no different.

We begin with the inspiring story of Sushma Verma, the 13-year-old from Lucknow who has already completed her graduation and is pursuing a Master's degree in Microbiology.

At age seven, she breezed through the state high school examination, competing with students twice her age. In the process, she beat the record of her brother, Shailendra, who is currently pursuing a master's course in computer applications in Bengaluru.

Sushma wanted to become a doctor. She had completed Class 12 and taken the Combined Pre-Medical Test for admission to the MBBS course. But she does not know how she fared... the authorities refused to release her results as she was underage.

What makes the teenager's story even more inspiring is her family background. Her father is a Class 8 dropout and her mother never went to school. Both parents work as daily wage labourers and struggle to make ends meet.

Her educational expenses are being borne by Sulabh International, an Indian NGO that works for the impoverished.

Indian child prodigies we should be proud of!

Spotted by filmmaker Bharat Bala, tabla prodigy Keshava wowed the world when he performed live at the opening ceremony of the 2010 Commonwealth Games in New Delhi.

Born in Auroville, Keshava began learning the tabla from the age of two; he was seven when he performed at the ceremony.

Keshava's talent was discovered by his grandmother, Prafulla Dahanukar, a painter, when he followed the beat cycles she played on the dining table perfectly. His tabla lessons started soon after.

His family believes he learnt the nuances of playing the instrument by watching Ganesh Basavaraju, who would accompany his mother, a dancer, on the tabla.

His performance at the Commonwealth Games -- it happened to be his first solo act -- went off flawlessly and garnered worldwide attention.

Thanks to his incredible talent and his curly locks, there have been several comparisons between him and tabla maestro Zakir Hussain, also a child prodigy.

Soon after the Commonwealth Games performance, Keshava returned to a quiet life in Auroville, away from the media attention. He lives like most other kids his age -- cycling, climbing trees and reading fairy tales.

Indian child prodigies we should be proud of!

Keshava may have had a much larger audience listening to him during the Commonwealth Games, but the distinction of being the youngest tabla player goes to Truptraj Pandya, who has received a certificate from the Guinness Book of World Records.

The six-year-old Mumbai boy gave his first public performance when he was just two years old. He played live at the All India Radio when he was barely three.

Truptraj's love for the tabla began when he was a toddling year-and-a-half; he would accompany his grandmother on a pair of aluminium boxes as she sang devotional songs.

It didn't take long for his parents to realise their son was gifted and began his training.

The Limca Book of Records is yet to accept his application since he isn't 12 years old.

Since then, Truptraj has played at over 50 public concerts. Meanwhile, his training continues. He hopes to become a professional tabla player when he grows up.

Indian child prodigies we should be proud of!

At 18 months, when the rest of us were still in our nappies, Ajay Puri was already operating a computer.

Long before many of us could learn to operate pullback toy cars, Ajay was operating several Microsoft products including MS Word, Excel, PowerPoint, FrontPage and Access Database. He was sending out emails

At the age of four, he became the youngest person in the world to design his own webpage.

Now 17, Ajay is something of a celebrity. He's met everyone who's anyone -- from Dr APJ Abdul Kalam to Atal Bihari Vajpayee to Dr Manmohan Singh to Bill Gates -- and is invited to speak at various conferences around the world.

Image: Ajay Puri designed his own webpage at the age of four.Photographs: Courtesy Ajay Puri's official website

Indian child prodigies we should be proud of!

Kautilya Pandit has often been called a mini-encyclopaedia, and justifiably so. Ask him a question and there are good chances he will have an answer.

Kids his age are trying to learn the basics of reading and writing; he's rattling off statistics about GDPs, economies, geographies and the per capita incomes of over 213 countries from around the world.

The six-year-old prodigy, who hails from a small village in Haryana and has been featured in several television channels around the country, is believed to have an IQ of 130 points.

You may have recently spotted him on Kaun Banega Crorepati.

Image: Kautilya Pandit is believed to have an IQ of 130 points.Photographs: Wikimedia Creative Commons